


Reach Up To the Roots

by ImagineGal (a_leprechaun)



Category: Across the Universe (2007)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_leprechaun/pseuds/ImagineGal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day on the compound with Lucy and Prudence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reach Up To the Roots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mimi](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Mimi).



**VI.**

Lucy finally finds Jude, Max and the others relaxing by the edge of the pond. Sadie is laid down by the edge of the water, trailing her hand through the surface, letting the fish nibble on her fingertips. Max is sharing a joint with the two girls he's taken up with since their arrival -- his wild yellow hair clashes with the dark purple skirt of the one whose lap he's leaned his head back into. Jude is near them, but alone, dark eyes trained on the sky as the sun starts to go down.

Lucy's sure he must have touched other girls -- or even boys -- since arriving on the compound. There's maybe dozens of them, free and willing and available. Honestly, she wouldn't have minded if she knew he had. But at the moment, she can't remember ever having _seen_ it.

It makes her feel better to believe that he's done it away from her, where she can't see.

"Hello," she says as she settles next to him. They share a quick kiss, the kind that's not much more than a routine among long-term lovers, and then she leans her head into the crook between his shoulder and neck, turning to watch the sky with him.

She counts the stars as they appear, and forms patterns with them, whimsical paper cutouts outlined in white against the velvet sky. In the deepest parts of her mind, the place where she hides things even Jude might never see, she reaches up toward them, and imagines herself dancing in a diorama world.

**V.**

"He wants us to move on tomorrow."

"Hmm?" Lucy twists her head to look down at Prudence. Somehow they ended up tangled like this, Prudence's head resting on her collarbone. "Mister Kite?" Prudence's hair is long and straight and smooth. Lucy lets her fingers run through it. "Are you gonna go with him?"

"I think so." Prudence's forehead brushes against the underside of Lucy's jaw she she looks up, dark eyes wide. "You could come with us, you know. You and Jude... Jo-jo... Maybe even Max."

Lucy looks up and lets the fantasy take hold, for a moment. But then she shakes her head. "The army's gonna catch up with Max eventually... even if the war ended before it happened, he'd always be a draft dodger." That meant he'd still only have two options. _Jail or Canada, and they both suck._ He'd never go for it. "'Sides, as long as people are dying over there, I've gotta try and do something about it."

Prudence sighs through her nose. "Yeah." She doesn't like the answer -- Lucy can tell. But that's Prudence. When the going gets tough, she gets going -- somewhere else, somewhere new, different, away from the struggle instead of toward it. It's alright, and Lucy's not going to judge Prudence for living the way she feels she has to. But she can't go with her.

"Besides. What would I do in a circus?"

**IV.**

Dancing, the world is dancing, reeling and spinning like a top -- and she is dancing with it, pinned to the ground by the force of the world as it turns. Not just gravity, more than gravity, it's enough to make Lucy feel heavy and light-headed, as she closes her eyes and lets the red-orange-green-violet curtains brush past her vision.

The breeze, or what breeze reaches her down there in the grass, is cool against her forehead and forearms. The air didn't feel so cool before, but now there's heat washing through her. She's never done this before, never had this done _to_ her before. She doesn't regret not having done it before, exactly, but she certainly doesn't regret doing it now.

That last coherent thought slips through just before she is pinned further down onto the ground by orgasm, the final long ripple of heat rolling through her back and forth. Stars seem to burst into life before her eyelids, and then one by one they burn out.

Lucy feels a trail of kisses, as light and flickering as fireflies, travel down from between her legs, down the inside of her thigh to the crook of her knee, and then the shadow is drawing itself over her again; Lucy can feel Prudence's weight settling on top of her. She moans appreciatively and rolls her hips upward, savoring the friction between her and the fabric of her skirt and the outside of Prudence's hip.

Prudence speaks. Lucy has never heard her voice quite like this before, so filled with sex and satisfaction. "Now you get to try."

**III.**

The pills make the universe simple and strange, like paper puppets in a diorama. From inside herself, Lucy can see all of it.

They lay in the grass all day and watch it grow a million miles tall, turn into stuttering-waving strands of paper mache. When Lucy massages the dirt beneath her fingers she can feel the grass extending all the way down to the center of the Earth, though mud and rock and molten play-doh, where it burns up into tiny little points of light. The stars are inside the Earth. The roots are in the stars.

Prudence becomes a silhouette above her, a shadow cut out of the cotton-blue sky. Lucy reaches up, almost expecting to feel a smooth, flat surface (slick like oil, or maybe marbled like construction paper), but her fingertips brush against a nose, a cheek, lips, a curtain of hair. The shadow shifts. Lucy feels a hand on her face. "What do you see?" she asks, curious, smiling.

The shadow speaks, and it sounds amused. "You're a wooden doll with hair made of wheat."

Lucy feels herself smile, lips stretching until she could swallow the sky. "I'm a wooden doll?"

"Don't feel like one." The shadow-fingers brush her tightly-pulled cheek, and then the sky _is_ swallowed, a hole is opening in the universe as the shadow grows larger and larger and Lucy feels a drape of Prudence's hair descending over her. When Prudence kisses her, Lucy hears the wind blow through the paper-mache grass, and the rustle is the rustle of wings as a hundred origami birds take flight. Lucy opens her eyes, and she can see the whites of Prudence's eyes, stark and clear against the darkness.

"I like this." She means the drugs. She thinks she means the drugs.

"Mmm." Prudence doesn't mean the drugs. That's clear. Lucy doesn't mind. She goes with the flow.

**II.**

They look like seeds in Prudence's hand, tiny white pills the size of pine nuts.

"Mister Kite's special medicine," she grins. "Want some?"

**I.**

Prudence wakes to the sound of the wind, and a soft violet glow in the sky. The sun is rising and she is alone, though the patch of grass where Rita lay yesterday evening is still slightly flattened.

She stretches, rolling onto her side in the cool dirt, then sits up, the top of her head barely clearing the tops of the grass -- and there, bobbing up and down through the field, she sees evidence of someone else. A head of golden hair whipped around by the heavy breeze, apparently wandering aimless through the field.

Prudence calls out, smiles and waves. Still, Lucy almost trips over her when she reaches the hiding spot. "Where's Rita?" she laughs.

"Dunno," Prudence shrugs, and leans back on her elbows in the dirt. "Where's Jude?"

Lucy shakes her head. "Somewhere." She looks away, squinting into the growing sunlight, and the wind does somersaults with her hair. She smooths it back with both hands. "Thought I needed some time alone, but it's not helping. Thinking too much, you know?"

Prudence knows. She grins and reaches into her pocket. "I've got something for that."


End file.
